Max Weber and Franz Kafka: A Shared Vision of Modern Law

Abstract

Recent scholarship suggests a line of influence from the sociologist Max Weber to the writer Franz Kafka, mediated through the lesser-known figure of Alfred Weber, who was Max’s younger brother and a law professor who served as one of Kafka’s law school examiners. This paper finds textual support for this claim of influence. Indeed, there is an uncanny similarity between Weber’s and Kafka’s writings on law, particularly in their diagnosis of a legitimation crisis at the heart of modern law, and in their suspicion that modern law cannot deliver on its promises.Weber and Kafka succeed at capturing the irrationalities, paradoxes, and disaffections of modern law, but in the final analysis their work suffers from a failure to appreciate law’s progressive and emancipatory potential.